


Artist's Interpretation

by Kanthia



Series: Life Goes On [10]
Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Domestic, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-26 17:35:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30109578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kanthia/pseuds/Kanthia
Summary: A little story of a little evening: a baby, a painting, Gohan, and God.
Relationships: Videl Satan/Son Gohan
Series: Life Goes On [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1454302
Comments: 5
Kudos: 29





	Artist's Interpretation

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/dbz/comments/hyl5pg/never_noticed_how_the_backgrounds_here_imply/) post on Reddit.

Bulma is many things: scientist, engineer, roboticist, weapons designer, abstract mathematician, capsule technician, inventor; and on top of that, necessity and curiosity have made her, later in life, an exobiologist, astronaut, linguist, theologian, anthropologist, queen. She is all of these things and still has time for her friends -- repairs on 18, upkeep on Kame House’s power grid and the Lookout’s water systems -- and dabbles in quantum physics, working on a time machine she jokes she’s already built.

And to all of that she can add xenopediatrician, once she’s done all the _coochie coochie coo_ and the weighing and measuring and reflex-testing, asks a thousand questions about bowel movements and sleep schedules and nursing habits, sanctifies all of Gohan’s anxieties and leaves them with enough formula to drown an elephant.

“Saiyan appetite,” she says, with a laugh. “Gohan, no offence, I have no idea how your mother did it.”

But she otherwise declares Pan to be a robust, healthy month-old: so healthy, in fact, that you might think it odd if you didn’t know her heritage. Gohan and Trunks were the same way. Then she clasps her hands, and says: “How much do you know about Punnett squares?”

Videl remembers passing Honours Biology, and Gohan nods vigorously, and Pan gurgles and dribbles a little. Bulma wipes tenderly at Pan’s chin. “Time will tell, and some day I’ll kick myself for the oversimplification, but based on her weight and reflexes it seems safe to treat the majority of Saiyan characteristics as dominant traits. I’ll run some more tests when she gets older. Just -- be prepared for anything. There’s a lot of variation in Saiyan kids, sometimes they’ll be flying by two months and sometimes in twenty years, and we still don’t know nearly enough about the effect of our planet and atmospheric conditions on them.”

They schedule her back in for a month’s time, then Bulma begs Gohan’s leave. He takes Pan to put her to bed and Bulma has Videl hop up onto the kitchen table, because on top of everything else Bulma has a working knowledge of obstetrics and gynaecology. Pokes about gently, asks about bleeding and pain, mood shifts, soreness during feeding. She has a curiosity both personal and scientific in Videl’s health, and chuckles as she answers the kinds of questions that have Videl’s ears burning at the tips.

\-- Then she heads out, uses the helipad on the roof and turns toward West City, leaving Videl alone with her thoughts.

Which, first of all: _flying?_ And secondly, _flying??_ Because Videl hadn’t really thought about the finer physical realities of raising a Saiyan kid, beyond the way her body remembers, even now, the ritual they’d performed at Bulma’s birthday party: the warmth of Pan’s energy; the feeling of completeness, wholeness, a closed circle; the moment where she realized how honest and distinct and yet interconnected each of their energies were, like vast oceans, like planets, like stars...

...Which is to say that she has much to mull over with Gohan, perhaps over a beer, or a cup of coffee.

There’s a fresh pot of decaf already made when she heads towards the den, Gohan sipping at a mug -- he’s sensitive to alcohol and caffeine, perhaps his upbringing and perhaps his biology and likely six of one, half-dozen of the other -- and she helps herself to a mug before settling herself on the couch to see what he’s up to.

He has a canvas set up, and a pallet of acrylics, and he’s painting.

“Oh, Videl,” he says, turning to her. He has a smudge of paint on his nose, which brings attention to the fact that he’s not wearing his glasses. “Pan’s asleep upstairs.” He motions towards the painting with a brush. “What do you think?”

Well --

\-- Nobody can be expected to be good at _everything_ , right? There’s a green lump she supposes is a hill, trees in single straight lines of brown that look like, if the indent in the fresh paint is any indication, they were done with a ruler. Eight silver circles in the air, and why is the sky purple?

She smiles with the mug to her lips as she settles on asking only that last question.

He smiles, wistfully. “It’s -- well. Videl, you remember when we fought Buu, and I was taken to the Sacred World of the Kais? This is.” He turms back, and squints. “It’s not very good, is it?”

“The ruler trees are a bit much.”

“Yeah.” He chuckles. “Everything there was so -- it’s hard to explain. So intentional. Like a garden, but the whole planet. Made you realize that a lot of other things might be intentional, too.”

Leave it to Gohan to turn something as simple as a painting into a meditation on the nature of gods. Videl has met Death behind his desk, and Dende atop the Lookout, and she had gazed upon Beerus and Whis without really understanding what they were. And before all of that she had seen the entities that called themselves Shin and Kibito from a distance, thought how odd it was that the shorter one floated above the ground and grinned like there was some great cosmic secret that only they knew about.

\-- And then they had arrived out of thin air riding a shared body the day after Videl’s wedding, to eat her rice and drink her tea and congratulate her on her marriage.

“Why a painting? Couldn’t you ask your dad to take you there, maybe take a photograph? Would make a nice gift for Bulma.”

The great cosmic secret was -- is -- Gohan.

“I like that I’m not good at it, yet,” he says. “It gives me something to work on. But I also like that I can do it as fast or as slow as I want. I like that nobody’s going to get hurt because I’m not good at it yet.”

Ah.

Let’s say, for the sake of the argument, that you take a boy, fresh out of a year in a little pocket of time, about to go fist-to-fist with the thing that had killed his friends and defeated his father. Sometimes Videl finds herself ruminating on what that moment must have felt like for him. He doesn’t like to talk about it, but he’ll open up if asked: anticipation, numbness, a sort of tunnel-vision, the vestigial sense of fear that Piccolo had unconsciously beaten out of him half a decade prior. Bulma had once described Saiyans as _mesocarnivores_ , meat-eaters who tolerate vegetables in times of duress or plenty; a predator has no flight to its fight. Any instinct to run in Gohan had always been profoundly and tremendously human.

And Pan has human in her, too, passed lovingly from both her grandmothers and one of her grandfathers. When she gets into scraps on the kindergarten playfield or life-or-death battles with space tyrants, will she have to swallow her fear like her mother? Or will she court it gently back into her caged heart like her father?

And instead, Videl says: “Would have been nice if Cell could be taken out with one really bad piece of art, huh? If Gero had shoved Mitama in there, not Vegeta?”

And Gohan says: “You should have seen it when my mom tried to teach my dad to knit.”

And she laughs, and he laughs, and when he laughs he is the most handsome man in the world -- in the universe -- so genuine in his joy that she can’t help but think of herself as the luckiest fucking woman alive. And honestly, it’s not even that bad a painting. It made her think about things, made her happy and sad and scared and a bit nostalgic and made her fall back in love with her husband, and isn’t that what art is supposed to do? So maybe when he’s finished with it she’ll hang it up proudly in the living room and tell anyone who’ll listen that it’s the artist’s interpretation of what he saw that day they all died.  
  


* * *

  
She wakes up a few hours later to feed Pan, wears her in a sling to rest her tired arms. Meanders downstairs to have another look at the painting, and there’s a strange soft light filtering out of the den; and though the thought of a stranger in her house after dark should fill her with dread, she instead finds herself oddly calm and at peace -- so it must be --

“Supreme Kai,” she says, who does not turn from where he floats, examining the painting.

“Please, Shin is fine,” he says. The fact that she can see him means that he wants to be seen; he is without Kibito, perhaps enjoying the well-earned right to be alone again. “This is Gohan’s work, then?”

She steps closer. Pan, as if sensing whose presence she’s in, coos happily. “Yeah. It’s of your planet.”

“I assumed so. It is -- myopic, and heavy-handed. But he has each of our moons, and the right shade of our sky…” He sighs. “He knows my world as I knew it, for millions of years. Proper, orderly, and empty.”

“If it’s upsetting --”

“-- Nothing of the sort. I am reminded that I took him there of my own volition, broke my sacred vows to have him stand under my sky. I chose him, readily and willingly, over our doom.”

“Well -- if it means anything to you, he remembers it fondly. I don’t think he would have painted it otherwise.”

He turns, then, and in his black-eyed gaze Videl knows the names and birthdates of each of the stars in the night sky, the smell of a new planet coalescing into being, the sound of cells sharing the secret of photosynthesis with one another.

“Ah, you brought her. I was hoping to see your daughter.”

He floats over. She supposes she should kneel, or at least step back and let him take the space he wants. But he smiles at the thought and instead sides in close to her left to peer into Pan’s eyes. She's never noticed how short he is, owing perhaps to the way his feet never quite touch the ground. He is fairly unremarkable to anyone at first glance. But then again, he is a creator, not a destroyer, as are all of the species he's created; no need to loom when your art is forming stars out of supernovae. No need to stand out when you're an artist just like the rest of them.

“Beautiful.” He strokes her cheek, gently. “Humanity was my design -- I’d modelled you after Saiyans, who were the creation of someone I loved. To see the two of you as one…” He clears his throat, and she does not notice the way his voice wavers. “I am glad for it.”

Pan stretches out and grabs playfully for his finger.

“Strong, too” he murmurs, with a chuckle.

Eventually she lets God go, who in return rubs his thumbprint on her forehead and blesses Videl with the knowledge that her daughter has a bottomless well of potential, much like her parents -- though the same could be said of any child, regardless of whether or not they’ll one day learn how to fly.

Then she blinks and he’s gone.

In the morning Gohan kisses her on the forehead before taking off for work, choosing as he often does to walk with both feet on the ground. In the afternoon she has a playdate with 18 and her daughter, and in the evening she has an interview lined up by her father. She should call her mother-in-law at some point to arrange a visit. She should call Capsule Corp, too -- Vegeta had mumbled something-or-other about wanting to assess the baby. And if she has a spare hour or two she could fire up the helicopter and let Pan spend some time with uncle Piccolo.

But until then, she’ll sip her coffee and enjoy a moment of quiet in the den with her daughter and the painting of the Gods’ own world.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me doing my thing on [ tumblr](https://kanthia.tumblr.com/)


End file.
